Amusing Monday: Dolphin becomes friend with dog

I have been intrigued by some unusual animal friendships, which
I’ve reported here in Water Ways: a baby hippo and a 130-year-old
tortoise, a cat and a crow, an orangutan and a hound, an elephant
and a dog. See Amusing Monday, Nov. 12, 2012.

But somehow I missed the tantalizing story of a dolphin named
Duggie and a dog named Ben on Tory Island, Ireland. The television
show “National Geographic Wild” is now telling the story of this
unusual friendship, which began in 2006.

That seems like a long time ago, and I’m trying to find out
whether the friendship might still endure or whether the National
Geographic people used old footage in their telling of the
story.

I like the National Geographic clip (first video on this page),
because it includes a discussion by Cesar Millan, known as “the Dog
Whisperer.” But I have a greater appreciation for the inquisitive
approach taken in an earlier production for BBC’s “Countryfile,” a
program mostly about places in and around Ireland (second
video).

Additional information was filled in by reporter Anita Guldera
in The Independent. She tells us that Tory
Islanders believe the female dolphin’s friendship with Ben came
about after she lost her mate. It all started about the time a male
dolphin washed up dead on the island.

I stumbled across the dolphin-and-dog story after someone
emailed me a lovely video about a dolphin saving a dog from a shark
attack. The video, called
“Dolphin and Dog,” was put together by a Dutch woman
named Ine Braat. I say the video was “lovely” because the music
creates a mood around this dolphin-and-dog friendship. But it’s
fiction, mostly based on clips from the movie
“Zeus and Roxanne.”

You may wish to check out some of Ine’s other lovely
compilations posted on her
website.

Another story about a dog and a dolphin is a more gripping tale,
because it involves a human whose life was in real danger. Lynn
Gitsham of Carrickalinga, Australia, says she was rescued by a pod
of dolphins after falling into the ocean while trying to get to her
dog. Reporter Michelle Vella tells the story for Australia’s Seven
West Television (below).